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Gaston
Gaston is the main antagonist of Disney's 1991 animated feature film, Beauty and the Beast. He was an arrogant and chauvinistic hunter who was determined to have Belle's hand in marriage, even by force if necessary. This obsession turned him into a ruthless and traitorous villain, especially when he found out that Belle's love was not for him, but for a Beast. Background In the 1988 screenplay, Gaston himself wasn't part of the story. Instead, there existed three suitors for Belle who competed for her hand in marriage who were ultimately similar to him, and shared the role of antagonist with Belle's wicked sisters. They ultimately were transformed into animals, alongside Belle's sisters, by the Enchantress as punishment for their misdeeds, including nearly murdering the Beast. In the 1989 screenplay, the three suitors were condensed into a single character, Gaston. In this version, Gaston was depicted very differently. Instead of a hunter who was the town hero, he was a marquess, or French nobleman. He would have shared the role of antagonist with Belle's aunt Marguerite, who would have chosen him as Belle's suitor, specifically as revenge towards Maurice (who in this version was a failed merchant who lost his wealth at sea, just like in the original tale). In the climax, he was to have traveled to the Beast's Castle, also stealing the Sedan Chair to ensure he tracked down the castle, and upon arrival, fight off several of the Enchanted Objects with a rapier before personally dueling the Beast in battle. He also met his fate differently (see Death section below). Personality Gaston is strong and handsome, and exploited these traits to the fullest. While it is not clear if he considers himself as a good person or not (like Ratcliffe and Frollo do), the villiagers very much do, considering how popular he is with them (especially the Bimbette triplets), and seem unaware of his true nature (Gaston reprise in the original film notwithstanding), and this serves to fuel his already massive ego. A narcissist who sees himself as superior to everyone around him, Gaston is proud, boorish, uncultured, impolite, narcissistic and sexist. He was also arrogant, as evidenced by his setting up a wedding before he even proposed to Belle under the expectation that she'd approve of becoming his wife. He was also convinced that he is powerful enough to defeat the bigger and stronger Beast by himself. He even taunts the Beast, wanting him to fight back as he wants to prove that he can kill him in a fair fight. However, his arrogance makes him underestimate his opponent and once he realizes his life is on the line, he may have to rely on desperate measures to survive. Despite this, he was not arrogant enough to believe there was no risk to being killed by the Beast, as he freely admits that fighting the Beast does have the likelihood that he or the other villagers might very likely die during the "Mob Song". Despite his belief that thinking is "a dangerous pastime" (suggesting that he is anti-intellectual), Gaston is not unintelligent; in fact, he is quite cunning, which is emphasized twice in the story; he comes up with a plan to get Belle to marry him by threatening to have her father, Maurice, thrown into an asylum should she refuse. When that plan is foiled by Belle showing the Beast with a magic mirror, Gaston simply improvises and quickly turns the tables by manipulating the villagers into forming a mob to kill the Beast, thus eliminating his competition. Gaston is not above using underhanded tactics, which had earlier been implied with LeFou's claim about Gaston being "slick" as well as Gaston's admission about being good at "taking cheap shots", and confirmed when he shows himself to literally be a backstabber in his final moments, showing that he also cheats at things. In fact, his "begging" to the Beast may have been nothing more than a trick: he still had a knife on his person, and if the Beast was as "kind and gentle" as Belle described him to be, then Gaston would've appealed to his enemy's better nature, thus allowing him to be brought back on solid ground before he could get one last shot. Gaston is the kind of person who won't give up on his goals easily; no matter how much Belle evades him or however hard the humiliation he receives, he is determined to make her his wife. His persistence is such that he will go to great lengths and sink so low to ensure he wins. Even when the Beast overwhelms him, Gaston will not tolerate losing Belle to this "monster." This drive will blind him to the dangers of climbing a balcony, which overlooks a deep abyss, causing him to fall to his death. In the film, Gaston vocabulary skills are slightly inconsistent; when Belle refers to him as being "positively primeval" early in the film, the latter apparently takes it as either a compliment, clearly not knowing what the term actually means, or a joke. However, in the "Gaston" song, he at one point accurately used the word "expectorating" in reference to his skills at spitting ("expectorating" being a more fancy way of saying the term "spit"). Trivia *While Gaston has no noble status in the final version, it is implied in one scene that he is still wealthy, at least in regards to the other villagers. **In addition, one of the earlier drafts of the post-rewrite film also made his wealth a bit more explicit, where he was apparently a lavish spender, often being extremely careless/reckless in his extravagant endeavors. This resulted in LeFou (here named "LaFou" and acting as his long-suffering family accountant) getting high-strung and neurotic as a result of this as well as Gaston's bullying. *On an interesting note, most of Gaston's actions were edited out of the final cut of the film: during his battle with the Beast, Gaston was originally intended to shout "Time to die!", but it was changed to "Belle is MINE!" (but his lips still mouth "Time to die!") in order to edit violence and get the main point of his rage straight. Also, Gaston's death scene originally had him stabbing the Beast in the back and willingly falling to his death while laughing maniacally, as if satisfied that if he could not have Belle, then neither would the Beast. Though this was changed to Gaston accidentally losing his footing, it appears to explain why Gaston chose such a dangerous and risky position to wound the Beast despite knowing that it would not help him win Belle's heart. *Gaston became more popular with his quote "No one (insert any name of activity) like Gaston" from the titular song from his name, which also became a somewhat popular internet meme. This even becomes a running gag in House of Mouse. *Gaston has some similarities to Avenant, a character from the 1946 French film Beauty and the Beast, played by Jean Marais. Specifically, both characters were madly in love with the "beauty" character in the film, and also eventually conspired to put an end to the Beast. A character named Avenant was originally intended to serve as the villain of a proposed sequel to the Disney film, as Gaston's younger brother, but the idea was scrapped. Unlike Avenant from the 1946 film, Gaston doesn't outright confess to Belle that he loves her, which leads to his demise. **Contrary to popular belief, Gaston himself was not actually based on Avenant, as Linda Woolverton, the screenwriter for the Disney film, refused to watch the Jean Cocteau version specifically because she didn't want to use it as the source material for the Disney movie.[4] Woolverton had instead based Gaston on several of her own unsuccessful relationships. Category:Characters Category:Males Category:Black Hair Category:Blue Eyes Category:Humans Category:European Category:French Category:Beauty and the Beast Category:Beauty and the Beast characters Category:Villians Category:Antagonists Category:Deceased characters Category:Disney characters Category:Characters who weren't revealed to be bad at first